From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Poll: Republicans likelier to support Israel when interests diverge with U.S.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to support Israel when U.S. and Israeli interests diverge.
A Bloomberg News poll published this week found that 67 percent of Republican respondents agreed with the statement, “Israel is an important ally, the only democracy in the region, and we should support it even if our interests diverge,” while 30 percent agreed with the statement “Israel is an ally but we should pursue America’s interests when we disagree with them.” Among Democrats, 64 percent of respondents agreed with the latter statement.
Overall, respondents were statistically tied over the question of whether the United States should pursue its own interests over Israel’s, with 47 percent agreeing and 45 percent disagreeing.
Discrepancies over who sympathized with President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were even sharper, with 76 percent of Democrats sympathizing with Obama and 9 percent with Netanyahu, and 67 percent of Republicans sympathizing with Netanyahu and 16 percent with Obama. Among all respondents, 47 percent favored Obama to 34 percent who favored Netanyahu.
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From The Times of Israel
Barak: Netanyahu ‘basically right’ on Iran, but ‘passive’
In post on PM’s election to Time’s ‘100 Most Influential,’ former defense minister says Netanyahu ‘pessimistic’ and ‘anxious’
Former prime minister Ehud Barak on Thursday wrote that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “basically right about Iran” while criticizing the premier for his gloomy world outlook and passivity in tackling regional threats.
In a profile for Time magazine, which included Netanyahu on its list of the world’s “100 Most Influential People,” Barak urged Netanyahu to mend fences with the US, fight diplomatically for a better deal with Iran, and, if necessary, launch a military strike on its nuclear facilities.
Barak, who was Netanyahu’s commander in an elite commando unit decades before serving as his defense minister, also offered cautious praise for the prime minister, calling him “thoughtful and an avid reader of history.” Referencing an unnamed US official’s criticism last October, he said: “Chickensh-t he is not.”
“I knew Bibi, decades ago, as a soldier and young officer under my command facing real fire. He was determined, effective and focused. Character does not change. Chickensh-t he is not,” he wrote. “But over time, while thoughtful and an avid reader of history, he developed a mind-set at once pessimistic, passive and anxious. Benjamin Netanyahu seems to avoid any initiative.”
From The Times of Israel
Netanyahu says West is ‘comatose, delusional’ in face of today’s Nazis: Iran
Nuclear deal proves world has not learned lessons of Holocaust, is again capitulating to tyranny, PM warns at Yad Vashem ceremony
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday compared Iran’s violent and expansionist aspirations in the Middle East to the Nazi campaign to conquer Europe during World War II.
He excoriated the US-led world powers for capitulating to Iran, and allowing it to maintain key elements of its nuclear program in the deal currently being negotiated, even as Tehran seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction and destroy the Jewish state.
World powers are “comatose” and “delusional” in the face of today’s Nazis, Iran, he charged.
“The main lesson of the Second World War, for democracies, is that they cannot turn a blind eye to tyrannical regimes,” Netanyahu said during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem museum to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Appeasement towards these regimes increases their aggressiveness,” the Israeli leader continued. “If this aggressiveness is not curbed in time, humanity may find itself in far greater wars in the future.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Congress’ anti-Semitism task force meets with European envoys
WASHINGTON (JTA) — A new congressional task force charged with combating anti-Semitism met with the ambassadors to the United States from France, Britain and Germany.
The U.S. Congressional Task Force Against Anti-Semitism, a bipartisan effort that was established last month, had its inaugural meeting on Tuesday.
Among those attending the briefing with the envoys were Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) Kay Granger (R-Texas), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Robert Dold (R-Ill.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.).
“I was pleased to hear from our French, German and British partners that they are taking this issue very seriously and are working to bolster security for Jewish communities,” Lieu said in a statement. “I look forward to working across party lines to explore creative ways not only to protect these communities but also to reverse these trends.”
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
U.N. envoy Samantha Power: U.S. won’t dismiss resolutions targeting Israel
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The United States would continue to “work closely” with Israel at the United Nations but would not count out advancing resolutions targeting Israel, the U.S. ambassador to the world body said.
Samantha Power testified Wednesday before the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the committee and the subcommittee, told Power that she was troubled by reports “suggesting a reevaluation of our long-standing policy of defending Israel at the U.N.” and said “supporting or remaining agnostic” on U.N. resolutions targeting Israel would violate the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, the chairwoman of the subcommittee, also was disturbed by reports that the United States may allow such resolutions to go forward.
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From PressTV
Palestinians, Israeli forces clash at Prisoners Day rally
Palestinian protesters, marking Prisoners Day, have clashed with the Israeli regime forces near the notorious Ofer military prison next to the West Bank village of Betunia.
Thursday’s clashes near the city of Ramallah came during a rally organized by Palestinian university students to pledge solidarity with inmates held captive in Israeli jails.
Israeli soldiers fired gas canisters to disperse the Palestinian protesters, some of whom responded by using slingshot to hurl stones at the Israelis.
Various Palestinian political factions have censured the Tel Aviv regime’s “aggressive policies” against Palestinians held captive in Israeli jails, a week after the death of a 22-year-old inmate identified as Jaafar Ibrahim Awad, due to pre-existing health complications.
In a joint statement issued on Thursday, resistance groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said that conditions within the Israeli prisons were growing increasingly difficult for the detainees, pointing to the growing number of ailing inmates who are denied medical care.
The statement further added that the Israeli regime is using “dangerous policies” in efforts to weaken the spirits of prisoners, blaming Tel Aviv for the demise of Awad. It also slammed the silence of international rights groups vis-a-vis the fate of Palestinian prisoners.
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From PressTV
Israel’s high court upholds disputed Anti-boycott Law
Israel’s High Court of Justice has upheld a law which allows for penalizing anyone who calls for a boycott of Israel or its settlement activities in the occupied West Bank.
On Wednesday, a nine-person top judicial panel voted unanimously to preserve the so-called Anti-Boycott Law, which aims to combat the rising tide of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
An identical vote also allowed the Ministry of Finance to take away funding, or even fine any organizations that support the BDS campaign.
The BDS is a global anti-Israeli campaign which uses economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with the stated goals of the movement – the end of Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab land, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens, and respect for the right of return of Palestinian refugees.
Anti-Boycott Law, passed in 2011, was suspended the following year by the same high court over accusations that it is unconstitutional.
From Russia Today
US ‘crossed all imaginable lines’ forcing Ukraine to do its bidding – Russian Def. Min.
The US has broken all the rules by dragging Ukraine into its orbit as part of its wider plan to expand NATO and alienate Russia’s neighbors, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told a security conference in Moscow.
“It its effort to draw Kiev into its orbit the US and its closest allies have crossed all imaginable lines, and our reaction could not fail to follow,” he said, adding that the enforcement of the so-called European choice in Ukraine led to a civil war, in which over 6,000 people have already been killed.
“A group of countries that presume to be the winners in the Cold War” are trying to impose their will on other nations Shoigu said.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
FBI director: Holocaust museum program a must for new agents
Speaking Wednesday at the museum’s National Tribute dinner in Washington, Comey made a point of noting that new special agents and intelligence analysts must attend the Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust program.
“It is of course significant because it was the most horrific display in the world of inhumanity,” Comey told the 1,000 donors, dignitaries and survivors at the dinner. “But I believe it was also the most horrific display in world history of our humanity, of our capacity for evil and for moral surrender.”
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From PressTV
EU states urge accurate labeling of illegal Israeli settlement products
More than a dozen European governments have called for the accurate labeling of goods produced at the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in a bid to allow potential customers in Europe to know of the illegal origins of the commodities.
On Thursday, foreign ministers from 16 member states of the 28-member European Union sent a letter to the politico-economic bloc’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, asking her to expedite the process of accurately labeling Israeli settlement goods that are sold in grocery chains across the region.
“We would like to draw your attention to the letter dated April 13, 2013, and sent to your predecessor (Catherine Ashton) on EU wide guidelines on the labeling of settlement produce/products,” the letter read.
“[The] continued expansion of Israeli illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, and other territories occupied by Israel since 1967, threatens the prospect of a just and final peace agreement,” the letter read.
The foreign ministers argued that such labeling of goods produced in the occupied West Bank is necessary to prevent consumers from being “misled by false information.”
“European consumers must indeed have confidence in knowing the origin of goods they are purchasing,” the ministers wrote in the letter.
More than half a million Israelis live in more than 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.
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